Keywords
Feminism, William Blake, Oothoon, Wollstonecraft, Sexuality, Gender
Abstract
One year before the publication of William Blake’s Visions of the Daughters of Albion, Mary Wollstonecraft, the mother of modern Western feminism, published A Vindications of the Rights of Woman. In her influential essay, she describes the concept of the tyrannical woman: a woman who, oppressed by reductive and stereotypical views of femininity, especially within the Madonna-whore complex, turns to forms of cunning and trickery to gain power over her environment. This paper explores Oothoon’s character in Blake’s Visions and how, over the course of the poem, she becomes a tyrannical woman. Oothoon, often praised by critics of Blake as his most admirable and complete female character, should not be reduced to merely a caricature of noble female resistance against oppression. Blake, aware of Wollstonecraft’s essay, and seeking for radical reform on many fronts, intentionally crafted Oothoon’s narrative arc to both expose and then destabilize the inherent biases present in the reader and in society. Recognition of her more cunning and sinister acts, such as the trap laid for the “girls of mild silver” in her vision, leads to a more complete understanding of feminine resistance against oppression and of reclamation of feminine power.
Issue and Volume
19.1
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Lambson, Asha A.
(2026)
"The Tyrannical Woman: The Collapse of Idolized Feminine Sexuality in Blake’s Visions of the Daughters of Albion,"
Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism: Vol. 19:
Iss.
1, Article 4.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/criterion/vol19/iss1/4